Revision3's web TV runs on star power
I've a feeling we’re not in Hollywood anymore.
But you might like it here too, Toto. This is Dogpatch, the bayside sliver of east San Francisco that’s home to the Internet TV start-up Revision3. Through the doors of this old brick warehouse and up the stairs, there’s a roomful of people who make a point of ignoring the old rules of the television business. Starting with the TV part. Revision3 is home to 19 original shows, 10 of which are filmed weekly in its on-site studio. But you won’t find any of them by flipping channels.
You see, here in Dogpatch, they’re setting television free — releasing the concept from its poison prison of glass and metal, so it can return to its native meaning: watching from anywhere.
And so far, people are. Revision3 was started in 2005 by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the guys behind Digg.com, the popular site where users vote on the best news stories of the day. Rose co-hosts the show “Diggnation,” a weekly rundown of the site’s top stories, which Revision3 beams out to about 200,000 viewers per 40-minute episode. He has become a model for the kind of smart celebrity the technology scene loves — people who are entertaining while the camera’s rolling, and enterprising when it isn’t.
“What’s working are these host-driven shows,” said Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback. “The ones where you’ve got an engaging host with a proven ability to aggregate social networks around them online, and who are great at talking about their passions.”
Revision3 owes that approach to another pioneering enterprise of which it’s a genetic descendant. The now-defunct cable network TechTV built a loyal audience earlier in the decade and minted many of the technology world’s best-known stars. A half-dozen TechTV alumni, including Rose and Louderback, currently fill Revision3’s roster.
But even with the overlap and the similar programming philosophy, it’s a lot different this time, said Patrick Norton, who got his television start at TechTV and now co-hosts Revision3’s popular techno-variety show “Tekzilla.”
“It’s incredibly expensive to launch a new cable channel,” Norton said. “Even if you do spend an enormous amount of money these days, you’re probably going to end up in the nosebleed sections of digital cable. “Our studio cost nothing by comparison,” Norton said of Revision3’s state-of-the-art, high-definition setup. “And by being online, we can target anyone with a broadband connection, which gives us huge potential audience all across the United States without having to sign a single distribution deal.”
But Revision3’s biggest asset is its stable of Web personalities who — even if they’re not familiar to the general public — are ubiquitous in tech circles. Louderback points to a website called Twitterholic, which tracks the 100 most popular users on the messaging service Twitter.
[Twitter-torial (thanks Dave): The site allows users to accrue “followers.” Every time a user sends a short message, all of his or her followers immediately receive it. As the site has grown — there are reportedly over 200,000 users now — the higher-profile users began a kind of arms race to see who could recruit the largest possible Twitter-follower army. The result is that Twitterholic functions as a rough proxy for overall Internet fame. *Web readers: this was for the print audience -- I know you already know.]
(Photo credit: Randi Lynn Beach / For the Los Angeles Times
Revision3 hosts occupy about a dozen of the top 100 Twitter spots. Rose reigns with 53,000 followers, edging out runner-up Barack Obama. Co-host Albrecht has 34,000 followers, while Veronica Belmont of “Tekzilla” is also in the top 10 with nearly 30,000.
In a culture where buzz, and the ability to generate it, is becoming one of the most valuable commodities, Revision3’s Twitter titans wield substantial influence. With a few keystrokes, they can put a new website on the map — or they can take one off.
Last week, Belmont pointed her followers to a video site she found interesting. “I took them down,” she said. All that influence had sent the site crashing to its doom. “Twice.”
Revision3 makes its shows available on a number of partner sites around the Web. This mass distribution tactic has become the industry’s preferred strategy — more platforms, more eyeballs. But in the fragmented online-video landscape, star power may be among the promotional forces that shines most bright and constant.
“There’s still not one place to go to find the best new shows,” said Dina Kaplan, a co-founder of Blip.tv, which hosts a variety of online programming including shows from Revision3. “So what ends up happening is that your content is about 25% to 40% of the cause of your success — and the rest of it is all about how you market, market, market.”
All that marketing doesn’t stop at Revision3. The Web stars can aim their publicity fire hoses at whatever they feel like. Gary Vaynerchuk, who is host of the hit show “Wine Library TV,” which plays in a shortened format on Revision3, uses his uncorked personality to build a personal brand he sees as a never-ending work in progress.
“I want to create a world where you’re not branded one way. I want to be a social media expert, and a marketing guru, and a big-time wine guy, and a Jets fan, and a family guy, and a sensitive guy, and a wrestling maniac,” Vaynerchuk enthused.
No comments:
Post a Comment